A Politics of Space - Hannah Arendt and Architecture as World-making

What is the value of architecture? Why should we care about the design of our environment? As long as it works, it’s good enough, right?

In this essay, Hans Teerds, Professor at the Academy in Amsterdam, argues the opposite. The built and the unbuilt environment require close attention. The architecture of our environment forms a collective domain according to the philosopher Hannah Arendt. It determines how we live, work, move, and thus meet or avoid one another. Not only does it affect individual lives, but it has an impact on the vitality of human communities. Architecture shapes our world in common, a world that offers a space for commonality in which democratic communities can accommodate human beings who differ from one another with conflicting interests and ambitions. Teerds calls this the political dimension of architecture. It is due to this political dimension, he argues, that architecture requires attention. Learning from Hanna Arendt, he calls for careful design and maintenance, as well as shared engagement and responsibility. Architecture, he argues, is too important to be left to the architects alone.